Base Camp is the beginning of a new hackathon era

Base Camp took place over the 14-16th of September in Telliskivi Creative City. It was the first time ever that Garage48 and Superangel invited only prototype ready young and fresh startup teams to join the competition.

For the past 8 years, Garage48 has been helping to create new teams, develop ideas and take them from an idea to a prototype in a mere 48 hours. Some of the startups born from our hackathons became well-known success stories (MSQRD,Vitalfields, and Timbeter to name a few) while others withered away over the course of time. However, we are well aware that some of the great teams didn't make it because they have lacked some of that extra boost that is needed to turn an initial idea into a potential multimillion-euro company.

That is why Garage48 was happy when Superangel approached us with an idea to organize a hackathon, which would focus on early-stage startup teams. Startup culture isn't a fit for everyone - it's fast-paced, and self-directed a lot of the time, and not everyone can get down with that type of atmosphere. For Superangel, Base Camp was an excellent way to get to know the work culture and dynamics of each team bit better. As Rain Rannu put it in his short talk about startups: “We want hustlers. The honey badgers. We are in search to find those people that really want to fight and work hard, persevere and have that sense of fearlessness in them that no matter if it's an awesome day or it's a bad day, they're gonna push on”.

Base Camp is a logical next step for Garage48 alumni teams, who have continued working hard on developing  their prototype into a functioning startup. Base Camp is also a first step of the Superangel Alpine House- 12-month high altitude training program for early-stage startups that takes them to the next level. It comes with 50k-100k investment, 5-week intensive customer development session in Silicon Valley and 1-year coaching from a Superangel partner or a top startup founder to make sure you raise the next round or reach the next major milestone.

While more than 50 teams applied to the hackathon, only 12 of the talented teams entered the competition. The main goal of the weekend was to work on a business vertical (market validation, sales, customer research) and also a technical side of the product or service.

The teams that entered the competition were Realified, Snackable, Medikeep, ReportAuto, Montonio, Sidekik, eXpact, hoopy, Eesti Õigusbüroo, Sharemind, Kingdom Technologies and Fitlap.

At hackathons, things are done at a super fast pace over a short amount of time with limited resources- a perfect mockup of a real startup environment. We have seen people working like lunatics before, but Base Camp was definitely a whole another level of crazy. Many teams moved in on Friday night and didn’t go home before Sunday night. After 48-hours of intense work, enough Coke and Red Bull to fill up a whole bathtub, boxes of Visine Drops to nurture the red eyes,  series of heated arguments and many mentoring rounds later, the results were following.

Winner- ReportAuto

ReportAuto is a team of bright-minded individuals, who have a bright future ahead of them on smoothing out the kinks and hardships that car owners have to experience when handling their insurance related cases. ReportAuto has a working product on iOS and Android platforms and during the weekend the team was working on finishing their product for insurance.

Public Favourite  and 1-st Runner Up Fitlap

Fitlap is an energetic and ambitious team whose goal is to make people's nutrition suck less. Fitlap gives you a nutrition plan so personal, you don't know what hit you. Fitlap already has a working product and a whopping 150 000 users in Estonia. They are looking to expand on 6 different markets. Over the hackathon weekend, they were improving the product by adding micronutrient logic to it.
Fitlap was also chosen as the public favourite team. The prize was handed to them by Minister of Entrepreneurship and Information Technology Rene Tammist


2-nd Runner Up Eesti Õigusbüroo

Eesti Õigusbüroo started in spring 2016 with a mission to lower how debt collection and legal service fees for people. With over 11 000 clients, 31 lawyers on the platform and team members they took on a challenge to automate the process of conducting a legally binding application which could be sent to debt collectors. Over the 48 hours, they successfully built a chat-like feature which by the final even had already helped hundreds of people.

Our congrats to the winners, big thank you’s to all the teams that didn’t make it but put such effort into their work and remember- Base Camp is just the first step of a very long and adventurous journey called Alpine House.

We would like to give a huge shoutout to anyone who was involved in the hackathon either as a participant or an organizer. Our special love goes to the Superangel : Marek Kiisa, Veljo Otsason, Rain Rannu and Marko Oolo. Big thanks to our lovely host Joao Rei for and the rest of the mentor crew- Kalev Kaarna, Maido Parve, Rainer Sternfelt, Vattan PS, Anneli Tuisk and Tarmo Katmuk.

See you at the next Base Camp!


About the author

mari hanikat

Mari is the CEO at Garage48. She is a very strong and mission-driven leader not afraid to go places no one has been before and help people. 🚀

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